


Drop Zone Collection

by nameless_constellation



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant, There is no such thing as a consistent writing style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:22:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24959839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nameless_constellation/pseuds/nameless_constellation
Summary: All my impulsive brain vomit for anything and everything goes here so i can stop staring at it.
Kudos: 5





	Drop Zone Collection

**Author's Note:**

> I finally finished all 9 seasons of CFV and my brain has a lot to say about CFV G, but mostly about how letting a 14 year old see a man burn alive is Not Good, because apparently the smell is something you will never forget! The line in the middle marks where i stopped writing for like a month, then came back with a disconcertingly different voice. 
> 
> Also, here’s a lot of Ibuki because miyano mamoru.

He was an ordinary child, and there was nothing to mark him out. Besides his eccentric hair, his surly face and average height sinks him into the endless streams of students that swarmed the street everyday. Ibuki lets the child drift further and further from him, as he rounded the corner into the same card shop he frequented everyday now. Vanishing from sight, the child disappears behind the glass doors and Ibuki too, lets himself be devoured by the bustling human waves. 

He was an ordinary child, nowhere near special and that’s what he should’ve been, where he should’ve stayed. 

Where he should have stayed, was in town and away from the murderous robots; far far away from the pain of having to stop the world (two worlds now, to be precise) from imploding under the hands of a dying madman. This plain, ordinary child should have been with his friends, grinding away at their homework and worrying about their next pop quiz. He was to be plain, but now the world has gone and stained him in their own unspeakable colour. The flames writhed about in dance, and their quivering heat burnished their cheeks. No wind passed, but they pressed on with their vicious swaying, growing taller and taller, seeking to obscure Ryuzu’s crippled form as his laughter, flickering between mockery and the choking gasps of a dying man, wormed itself into Ibuki’s ears, taunting their failure. The smoke drifted higher and higher, and where they ceased, dusty splotches of soot coloured the pristine metal ceilings. 

Ibuki’s hands were quivering, his tense shoulders vibrating with the need to do something, to stop this madness somehow, but the most he could do was to press his clammy palm up against Chrono’s eyes; and even that came a moment too late. Those wide eyes had seen everything, from the predatory madness in Ryuzu’s eyes to the crisped crackling of burning flesh. Beneath his palm, Chrono shivers too, frantically fluttering his eyes, as if he could blink off the images like sand from his eyes. Each flush of his eyelashes against Ibuki’s palm seemed to sear him, burning line after line into his skin, like scores of his errors that demanded to be settled. (With whom? Even he who holds the scorebook cannot read his own handwriting to begin with.) His throat too is burning, drying up the same way the old man’s body is shrivelling and crumbling into itself, and any words he knew turned to dust upon his tongue. Only the sweetly putrid smell of burning flesh answered any questions they had, burrowing its way into their noses, clinging onto the very tips of their tongues. It is here to stay, Ibuki realises belatedly, the scent of death and destruction will follow us. 

The door behind them was kicked down, and the rest of their team had scrambled in, but neither of them took notice. Eyes trained on Ryuzu’s funeral pyre, Ibuki finally let his mind scream itself hoarse as Chrono doubled over with nausea.

  
  


* * *

And then he was confronting Ryuzu, all child-like and rearing with malice. Their cards were all splayed out before each other, the gears of fate churning themselves desperately, seeking some sort, any sort, of conclusion. (Belatedly, Ibuki wonders if there was a world out there, where fate had packed its bags and retired early, before their little project ripped itself open at its tangled seams). It was only his 4th turn and he was already exhausted; the tips of his fingers were white from strain, the cards in his hands on the verge of being crushed by the pressure. The pounding of his heart was so insistent, that it seemed to draw the rotating gears into its steadily rising rhythm. His gaze met Ryuzu’s, and wondered how those eyes took in the world (and its people) so preciously and callously at once.

He never called himself god, only donning the robes like a child playing doctor would, mindlessly plastering band-aids and knotting bandages. It was quite fitting, not just because of his new body, but rather, the one-track naiveté that fit his soft fleshy face like a glove. Incorrect, thought Ibuki, a 6 year old child would wear that precociousness like an appointment, but the same drapes like an unsightly mess on a man pushing 50. Especially on a man pushing 50, so adamant and stubborn in seeing his adolescent dreams to the end, that he is willing to spit in Death’s face like a spurned suitor. There is something irrevocably disgusting in gleaning, from the wide eyes of that child, the calculating nuance of a strategic desperado. (And that still belied the things he was capable of, the lengths he was willing to take). Something, or someone must have failed him, Ibuki allowed himself to surmise, if his own experiences were anything to refer to. Not an alibi, but a reason; the paradoxical in this world almost always came from an inability to bridge the gap. When the divine fails, someone must step up to take the spot, and become (or at the very least, inundate themselves with) a god-like conviction, so that there will always be, light or shadow, something to chase after. Like a dog to a bone, or a hyena to a carcass, Ryuzu’s pursuit forms him; if his ideals cease to come to, the world will have denied the existence called Ryuzu Myojin.

Both bone and carcass have been tossed his way at different intersections of his life, and likewise, he too, had once been denied by the world. Redemption, shoved into his hands by Sendou, came in the form of a card. It had been easy, that fool vindicating every little folly that stepped his way, but moving on had been harder. Where his absolution was condensed in a single piece of stock card, burying his skeletons took more than a pat on his shoulder and a new deck. It took a literal trip around the world, when he was knee deep in sand, that the winds blew the dust off his past. A chance encounter was the bone fate had decided to toss his way, in a manner so contrived, Ibuki almost felt mocked at. (After all, who hasn’t seen those shows as a child, and who hasn’t aspired to be the hero blessed by fate). 

But Ryuzu isn’t him, fundamentally and idealistically too different for the same bone to be flung to him. Unlike Ibuki, Ryuzu had never been a spotted hyena gnawing on rotting relics. Since the very beginning, he had been powerless, led to believe that he had the potential and ambition, that he could fix the world’s mistakes, when the only thing he could possibly achieve was to repeat them over and over again. (though a wiser man would've understood that it was no fault of his own, but Ibuki was in his own way, much like Chrono.) While Oksizz’s shadow remains his albatross, Ryuzu was his own blackbird in flight, looming alone over the universe; a solitary shadow prowling for allies to bring him his own brand of peace and tranquility. 

Ryuzu was mocking him now, but it barely mattered. Five cards binded, and then another two more; Ibuki thinks back to Ryuzu’s taunts. The gears of fate were strangling him, snapping away at his neck. His arms felt heavier than usual; maybe it was the effect of swatting away the urge to fall asleep, or maybe it was indeed his sins binding him to the board. Nevertheless, Ibuki inhales sharply as Demiurge glowers with even more power, this man and his mulishly quixotic exclamations is grinding his patience down to its bone. His hand gropes in his pockets for the plan, and allows himself to brace for impact. Really, he knew from the start there was no victory to grasp, yet he still walked in, heart drumming to the sliver of light he held onto. Exhaling, the voice in his head counting down washes away the ramblings of a certain midget sized extremist. (It was his moment, please do allow him to be petty.) Ibuki thumbs the button, and dreams of a normal world, where he could bask in the future’s only light, wishing he could watch over him grow.


End file.
